June 11, 2011

Anti-Walkerites are disturbed that Wisconsin law enforcement is monitoring social media to learn of plans to for direct action like storming the state Capitol. But I think it would be incompetent not to pay attention to these things.

Hey, people, Twitter and Facebook are public speech — quite visible and searchable. The notion that you have an expectation of privacy there is sheer lunacy.

Any investigator who doesn't examine social media to assist their investigation is guilty of malpractice. I have been cross examined regarding video surveillance many times. Juries don't like surveillance if they think it's not warranted and/or intrusive. However, they almost all understand the need for it in certain circumstances. And, they do understand the "reasonable expectation of privacy" concept. If I videotape a plaintiff cutting wood in his yard juries understand that he/she had no reasonable expectation that someone couldn't see them. If it's in public then it's NOT private. Social media is by definition public; therefore it's not private. It's really pretty basic when you extract the emotion.

The myopia of the left...we want surveillence, no one has individual rights above the government, the police are our union brothers and sisters and work for us...oh, wait...this can work against us? Oh wait, we want these rules when we're in charge but not for the opposition. This is why the founders were so careful about how laws were written, and stayed away from writing laws like we have now that are designed to control behavior and not protect the right to choose our own behavior, absent of harming others. When you start writing law to stop others from "offending" others...it's down hill the rest of the way. Why are the leftist so afraid of concealed carry? Because it makes it a bit more "iffy" to be pushing and shoving, name calling, crowding in on, attempting to destroy sound equipment and infringing on the right to free speech of others, if you're not sure that only your union police force are the ones equiped to self defend.

The lesson is so simple that my daughter understood it after I explained that posting pictures of yourself and your underage friends doing shots out of a blowup doll on your MySpace page is a big, big mistake.

Remember the fake Koch call where Walker admitted they considered planting troublemakers?

Another nice press release from Walker's Press Secretary though. Was this cross posted at the MacIver Institute Althouse? Or vice versa, it's hard to tell. It was noticed that you, the MacIver Inst. and Vicki McKenna all had the same exact headline on the Special Olympics story. Hmmph.

Garage, we've all seen the transcript, we all know you're lying and we all know why. You can't face the truth, that you're on the side of the most hateful group of Government thugs in recent memory. Keep lying to yourself, the Right has no use for people with so little strength of character, so you might as well pollute the Left. Help them rot from the inside out.

PogoOdd the organizers with the Special Olympics said the protesters weren't "disruptive", and were "respectful" to the athletes. Source.

Walker called it "appalling" [with a straight face], as he aims to completely dismantle Medicaid and BadgerCare in the state. The courageous thing to have done was to congratulate and honor them, and then talk a little bit about how his cuts will impact the state.

ADDENDUM: It’s interesting what different types see in this story. For the free market folks at CEI this is just another example of corporate rent seeking to the advantage of larger corporations. For the folks at Think Progress, on the other hand, this is yet the latest example of Gov. Scott Walker’s craven catering to campaign contributors — even though not a single source Think Progress cites links the governor to this proposal. To the contrary, several of the stories mention this provision was slipped in by a legislative committee, and only one of the stories even mentions Gov. Walker by name — and only then to refer generally to the governor’s budget. Gov. Walker may well support this measure — and, if so, shame on him — but I see no evidence of that — certainly nothing to justify blaming him for the “war on craft beer.”

That's the first time I've read a post here and LOL'ed before I finished reading it. These are the same guys that follow you around with camera everywhere? WTF? There is no privacy any more. If it's privacy that they want they should download PGP and encrypt their email.

Koch: We’ll back you any way we can. What we were thinking about the crowd was, uh, was planting some troublemakers.

Walker: You know, well, the only problem with that —because we thought about that. The problem—the, my only gut reaction to that is right now the lawmakers I’ve talked to have just completely had it with them, the public is not really fond of this […]

I don't see any indication in your quote, Alex, that anyone ever seriously suggested putting plants in the crowd. It may have been included on a laundry-list of "we could do this" and it's not as though it's a particularly novel idea... of course someone "thought of it." If we're going to hold everything so much as mentioned in a brainstorming session as an *endorsement* we are really and truly screwed.

What isn't even slightly ambiguous in this is that, if it were frivolously suggested or seriously suggested, that Walker disapproved of and rejected entirely the idea of planting troublemakers.

I realize that double standards are the order of the day, but it's pretty pathetic to rely on criticism that someone didn't reject something with the proper amount of offended outrage.

It's like the Palin e-mails... no one did anything wrong and everyone knows it. And since Walker can't be "got" for doing anything wrong, he has to be "got" for failing to clutch his pearls.

Y'all are missing the headline here. East Berlin? Berlin - full stop - wouldn't have surprised me. Some reference to Bush or - I don't know; who else is worse than Hitler? - Glenn Beck wouldn't have caught my attention so much. But why would someone at Daily Kos pick on the German Democratic Republic? Maybe a fan of "The Lives of Others"? It's well worth seeing, though I thought the end took longer than necessary. I'm still surprised, though, that that would be the first reference that would occur to a Kossack.

Also, did dissenters of East Germany ever occupy the capitol? I've heard of sadly short-lived uprisings in Czechoslovakia and Hungary, but the occupation of the capitol building in East Berlin in response to a reduction in the privileges of state employees missed my history books. Perhaps I need to read more.